Kasa Magnificent Mile Chicago — Hotel in Chicago

Read carefully: If you are a menopausal mom booking for the family DO NOT STAY HERE! If you are a polar bear and like circulating cool air, this is not the place for you. I am currently booked at Kasa for a week in October and it is Hot in here!! Their amenities state that there is AC/ heating. Well, per Kasa, the building’s AC has been turned off due to the season, which starts Oct 30. Yet, they didn’t disclose any of this information when booking. Their resolution? Open the windows. I understand this area is noisy, and closed off windows drown a lot of it out. But open windows just makes the EMS sirens and alarms going off so much louder and make it hard to sleep. There are no ceiling fans either. The best Kasa could do was bring me one fan for the whole two bedroom apartment. I booked directly through them to avoid middleman issues. And even like this, there was no immediate resolution. I wish Kasa would have had a disclaimer anywhere in their direct booking page about there being no AC. I would have booked somewhere else. The apartment gets up to 82 degrees but I didn’t think of taking a pic, so I caught it at 79 degrees. This is with no air circulating and the weather outside in the 70s. I paid a fair amount of money to be having this issue in a place like this. So, if sleeping in 77-79 degrees with no circulating air is ok with you, then you’re set. The building is in the middle of everywhere. Walking distance to a lot of places. If you’re someone that has to have a cool environment to rest and sleep, this is not the place for you. The hubs and I were miserable. No sleep, uncomfortable, and wake up tired for training in the morning. ** Edit: Kasa offered us a resolution. Get out if you don’t like it and we’ll give you a refund for the last three days remaining plus two hundred dollars. This, of course, was on a Friday evening. Mind you, it took me three days of research to find this place. I booked over one month in advance. And they wanted me to find a place for my family of five with a Friday night move out/in date? When everything is doubled or gone? Completely ridiculous! So we were sent another fan and just had to take it. This could have been a five star review. I mean, I did do the research. Great location. We walked to the bean, Mr Beef, Giordano’s, Lou Malnatis, The riverwalk, target, Walgreens, Portillo’s and Barnellis. There’s a whole lot of shops, restaurants, convenience stores, bars, casino within walking distance. Wrigley field was a train ride away. And if you don’t feel like walking, just take the bus. Easy bus ride to the Navy Pier. Get your Ventra card to use both the bus and train. The place itself was clean with just some minor issues like small blood stain on the couch mattress and slow draining tubs. And then again the big AC issue. The view was great. We were in a corner apt 2002, with views of a great night skyline from the balcony. We didn’t use it, but the place has a stove, fridge, microwave and pots/pans, dishes for cooking. Whole Foods is around the corner. Check in was easy, and not much interaction with the staff up front but they were nice the two times we dealt with them. Communication with Kasa is through text message and email. Of course, they’re always “friendly” with their generic “I understand how frustrating this is” “Your comfort is our priority” messages followed by the bad news. It only took two days before they brought us a fan for our discomfort lol. The beds were comfortable, especially at midnight when the place had cooled down a bit from having the windows open all night. (They need to stay open otherwise it gets hot again.) Only one TV in the living room. None in the bedrooms. Small washer and dryer, iron and board, toiletries, hangers, trash bags, napkins and glassware with dishwasher for use. Lots of closet space. Overall it’s a good place. The great reviews must be when the AC season was in full bloom. Again, if they would have put a disclaimer about the no AC during my check in dates, I would have looked somewhere else and have avoided this...

Not for me – Nickle and Diming – No humans - Texting only? ||I stayed at Kasa on W. Superior for 5 days in early May. ||Here is the list of good and bad:||Good:|-Great location, safe area, close restaurants and shopping.|-Spacious studio fully equipped, well-appointed, and furnished nicely. ||Bad/Not Great:|-Difficult Heating/AC issues – the building has either heating or air conditioning, NOT BOTH. When I was there, it was in the high 30s at night, and the building had already switched over to AC. I was very cold in the room, and through texting (the company refuses to call or send a human to talk to), I was told that this particular issue was addressed on their website – trust me, it is buried there. Chicago is a great city with ever-changing weather – WHY would Kasa choose this building with this vital issue, to have their rentals located in? (Kasa only uses a few floors in an apartment building.) I assume that even establishments that are “rent by the hour” can select heating or AC when the guest desires. If you are at all susceptible to temperature changes, you might want to reconsider this property. ||-Lied to – I asked to have a space heater, and in a text, I was told they do not allow them as it is dangerous. On day two of my stay, someone brought me a space heater, saying they had them, but they were all in use. All of this was through texting, as the phone number I was given was in CALIFORNIA, not Chicago. After being on hold for 10 minutes, I hung up. If you like communication ONLY through texting, you will love this, I hated it. Some of the texts seemed like they were either AI-generated or cut-and-paste jobs. For example, I was told in a text that if I was warm, I could consider opening the windows. Was anyone even reading my texts? If you are a fan of non-verbal communication, then this place is for you. ||Nickel and Diming – Want to check in an hour earlier? – Cough up an extra $25. Want to check out 45 minutes later? – cough up an additional $25. If a room is ready an hour before the official check-in time, why not let me into the room? Call me old-fashioned, I prefer calling or seeing someone at a front desk, asking if I might have late or early check out by an hour, and getting an answer, WITHOUT paying for it. ||-Safety in the bathroom – I was surprised that there was no safety bar in the bathtub. How is that legal?||-TV – A TV in the sleeping alcove would have been nice, but the lack of local stations, CNN, or any semblance of regular TV choices was not great. Sometimes I don’t want to relax with a full movie on Netflix. ||My trip to Chicago was great, but my stay at KASA...

Rating this 3 stars because of the customer service. No complaints, it was top notch. The folks at the front desk tried their best to fix our problem with the power they had, and I really appreciate their time for it. Otherwise this would be a 2 star from mismanagement on a corporate side.

Kasa's rooms are a part of a larger building with its own apartments and people living there. So elevators have to be shared. Sadly there are too few elevators for the amount of traffic and floors (6 total for 52 floors, but technically only 3 depending on which section of floors you're on), so there is often a 5-10 min wait in a line during work rush hour times.

Our toilet started leaking on day 2. My SO is a handyman, so he knew it was a type of leak the toilet has to be replaced for. Indeed that needed to happen, but the handyman on the apartment's staff didn't have an extra toilet on hand, as another Kasa apartment's toilet had the same issue a day before. The best he could do was a temp fix and hope that it held for now. We requested a new room, but Kasa was completely booked in all their locations around Chicago apparently, and had nowhere to move us, since the bath is unusable.

Customer service tried their best to work around this corporate mismanagement. It took several hours and several calls (had to call Kasa corporate through a phone tree. Kasa rep called me back to help but there was no sound on their end. I called back and had to go through the phone tree twice as it reroutes to Kasa's generic number...) We were temp moved to another room for the night, to see if they can fix the toilet in our room by tomorrow. When moving to the temp room, I had to do a brand new check in and have another $250 hold on my credit card (along with the original hold on the first room). More bathroom trouble, this time with me getting stuck inside. The door was slightly off so when I closed it, I couldn't open it from my side. My spouse had to brute force it open. Eventually we went back to our original room and it was okay to stay there. Though on the last day before checking out, the toilet started leaking again. Hope they fixed it before the next person checked in. Kasa requires an ID upload and facial scan on their site to finish checking in. This is mandatory. You have to show id again in person as well. With so many breaches happening to different companies everyday, I would not have booked if I knew it required you to give this info.

The rooms were clean, and it was mostly quiet, but I would not say this aparthotel is a good enough value for the cost, unless you have 3+ people in a room that...